An Innocent Love
With authentic scenes and details based upon an actual program on the idyllic University of Washington campus, this film sensitively and high-mindedly depicts a gifted adolescent whose intellectual peers happen to be chronological elders. 14-year-old Harry, a university junior and aspiring astronomer, has his heart set on an upcoming field trip to view a rare solar eclipse. Because he would miss his sister's wedding, his parents oppose his attending. Needing money to go on his own, he answers a want-ad from Molly, a freshman volleyball star, for a tutor in calculus; and their relationship becomes tenderly romantic. Her boyfriend Duncan, stroke on the rowing team, also befriends Harry and makes him his boat's coxswain. Harry and Duncan commiserate together through the painful ambivalence of helping the girl they love improve her math grades in order to transfer to far-off UCLA, leaving them both.